All all of us in the email world know that the act of ending of an email with the perfect "signature" can break down a human spirit quicker then the time it takes to run to your mirror and shout, "Why do I feel this unnatural social pressure?!"

This obviously does not apply to those who are still unsure about using "The Facebook" and other interweb foolishness.

For those interested however, some basic rules of thumb courtesy of The Hairpin:

The first thing to know is that this sign-off (the closing word or words at the end of your missive) is more properly called a “valediction.” Derived from the Latin vale “goodbye” + dicere “to say,” it’s the opposite of a salutation. Now that you're feeling fancy, we can get down to brass tacks.

When you're feeling aloof: "Regards"
Ending your message with a bare noun like this shows you to be calm, collected, and a little bit bitchy. These regards aren't particularly good. These regards aren't particularly bad. These are just some regards that happen to exist, like a point in mathematical space.

Alternatives: "-[Your name]"

When you're writing to Lord Voldemort: "I beg to remain, Sir, your most humble and obedient servant"
Who are you? Sit down, you're embarrassing me.

Alternatives: "xoxoxoxo"

When you're feeling rly kewl: "ttyl"
Don't use this.

When the stress of selecting an appropriate valediction gives you shingles: "Sent from my Blackberry"/"Sent from my iPhone"
If you want a way around this whole valedictory business, consider cheating and making “Sent from my [smartphone of your choice]” your default email signature.

Alternatives: This is a chance for you to pretend to have the smartphone of your dreams. Don't be afraid to make something up! "Sent from my Talaria." "Sent from my EnVoyer." "Sent from my iBox."

When you're feeling too cute for words: "Signed, Sealed, Delivered"
I'm yours.

Alternatives: None needed. You've reached the pinnacle.

Ron Barber, the district director for Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, walked into the Monday meeting of Democrats of Greater Tucson this week to a big round of applause.

While he was using a cane—Barber is still recovering from nerve damage after taking a bullet in his upper left thigh during the Jan. 8 shooting rampage that left six dead and 13 wounded, including Giffords—he was able to clamber onto the stage to address the crowd of Democratic activists at their weekly luncheon.

Barber said that Giffords, who is recovering from a gunshot wound to the head, is making progress in her recovery in Houston, where she is living with her husband, retiring NASA astronaut Mark Kelly.

• P.K. Weiss

“It’s very tiring, but she’s determined,” he said. “And if any of you know her, you know that determination is one of her most important characteristics.”

Barber told the crowd that he remains optimistic that Giffords will be able to return to work, saying that she understands what’s been said to her, even though she struggles to speak.

“For those of you who know about rehabilitation, if your cognition is intact, the rehab becomes much more feasible for success, and that’s certainly the case for speech therapy,” he said.

But Barber stopped short of saying Giffords would be able to seek reelection.

“As far as a decision to run or not run, I think we’ll know more about that later in the year or early next year at the latest,” he said. “The congresswoman will make that decision when the time is right. She’ll make it based on her own sense of her ability to serve well. She will not, I don’t think, do anything unless she can do it extraordinarily well. But we won’t see a decision for awhile.”

I don't know exactly what's going on with the new Pedro Almodovar film, The Skin I Live In, which stars Antonio Banderas and is set to be released in America on October 14 (although one can only guess when it will show here in Tucson), although I think I might have nightmares starring the guy licking the screen in the middle somewhere. Even if I generally prefer Almodovar's emotionally tender work to his creepy psychosexual stuff, it's good to see Banderas back making movies that seem worth seeing.

[NYMag]

Events by the Powhaus collective have an extended life both before and after the actual date of the production. After each show, there's a flood of photos and videos cataloging what happened. Before the show, there's generally a video that tends to confuse me, and the above video for the Glitter Ball 3000 featuing Kitty Quasar (like him on Facebook, which has apparently expanded to Uranus) is no exception.

The Glitter Ball returns to the Rialto Theatre on September 9th. Does anyone want to be the other half of the Mael brothers? You can pick which one you'd like to be, but I need some time if I'm going to grow a facsimile of Ron's mustache.

The website FloatingSheep, which has a very enjoyable set of infographic maps for your nerdish enjoyment, has taken data visualization to new heights, creating a map color coding the relative price of marijuana nationwide. Basically, if you like to smoke, don't move to Minnesota, it seems.

In other news, our medicinal marijuana column debuts on September 8th, so there's something to look forward to.

The debut album by Wild Flag, whose lineup seems intended to make indie rock fans run to their favorite blogging platform, is streaming at NPR's First Listen site. If you liked Sleater-Kinney, you're bound to enjoy this as well. If you didn't like Sleater-Kinney (or Helium, whose frontwoman, Mary Timony, is also a member), maybe we should reconsider our friendship.

A new restaurant and microbrewery is opening on the corner of Limberlost Drive and Oracle Road.

Owner Hal Burns says he hopes to have Jalopy’s Grillville and Brewery open in October. The first batches of beer should be available around the end of the year.

Burns says he and his brew master are both “home-brewers turned microbrewers.” They’ll be brewing batches that range in size from 55 to 100 gallons, with three or four brews in regular production and new flavors coming on line as inspiration strikes.

“We’re going to keep shuffling the cards to come up with all sorts of recipes,” said Burns.

The restaurant will serve pizza, burgers and sandwiches. Burns also hopes to offer delivery of both pizza and beer, although he’s still working out the details.

Maybe we're all too dazzled and conditioned by the streamlined glitz and glam of national politickers, but tomorrow's election candidates seem to have love-hate relationship with the internet. A couple highlights include:

Rick Grinnell's (Grinnell4Mayor) whopping five tweets about Second Saturdays:

Joe Flores's (most likely accidental) adorable heart-cutaway on his website's image splash:

Regina Romero seems to have gotten the hang of things a little more, besides posting every Facebook activity to her Twitter (which maybe her supporters appreciate?). At least there's some amusement in this disappointingly boring election cycle.

The New York Times' Virginia Heffernan has a blog post decrying the state of reality television, bringing up a list of reality show stars who feel like their lives have been ruined by appearing on various programs for our amusement. While I guess it probably really does suck to be on one of the Real Housewives shows, the premise seems to ignore the fact that no one is making you be on these programs. I doubt they would exist if there wasn't a constant stream of insecure fame-whores looking to get on TV and make a buck, so I don't know if you can blame reality TV for just bringing to light problems people had anyway:

But, like game-show contestants, most reality participants lose. And on reality shows, they lose what they came in with — their marriages, their families, their cultural capital, their professional reputations, their actual money and in some cases their freedom. (More than one “Real Housewives” husband has landed in jail.)

One year ago, Charles Ommanney, an award-winning Newsweek photographer who appeared on “The Real Housewives of D.C.,” told The Times, “I was naïve and foolish to sign off on doing this,” he said. His career had suffered, he explained; his marriage collapsed. “I regretted it. I lost touch with everyone, and mix that with my marriage falling apart and the show taking over, it was very sad.”

Just after Mr. Armstrong’s death, Danielle Staub, another real person who collaborated in a portrayal of herself as demonic (on “The Real Housewives of New Jersey”), gave a TV interview in which she said that she knew just how Mr. Armstrong felt. She too had felt suicidal, and moreover she considered emotional problems an occupational hazard. “So many families — not just the Armstrongs — have fallen apart as a result of these shows,” Ms. Staub said.

One professor of economics theorizes that ugly people should be protected under the Americans With Disabilities Act and Equal Opportunity. This is, of course, good news for your mother, who is so ugly that every night, her pillow cries:

The mechanics of legislating this kind of protection are not as difficult as you might think. You might argue that people can’t be classified by their looks — that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. That aphorism is correct in one sense: if asked who is the most beautiful person in a group of beautiful people, you and I might well have different answers. But when it comes to differentiating classes of attractiveness, we all view beauty similarly: someone whom you consider good-looking will be viewed similarly by most others; someone you consider ugly will be viewed as ugly by most others. In one study, more than half of a group of people were assessed identically by each of two observers using a five-point scale; and very few assessments differed by more than one point.

For purposes of administering a law, we surely could agree on who is truly ugly, perhaps the worst-looking 1 or 2 percent of the population. The difficulties in classification are little greater than those faced in deciding who qualifies for protection on grounds of disabilities that limit the activities of daily life, as shown by conflicting decisions in numerous legal cases involving obesity.